New polling from ABC News and Ipsos shows former president Donald Trump’s favorability ratings collapsing in the aftermath of his April 4 arraignment and indictment the week prior.
Breaking down the numbers, which saw a four-point dip to 25% favorability, “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski said Tuesday that Trump is “dropping like a rock,” and Willie Geist said the number is so low that he’s “starting to dip into being a fringe political candidate.”
“If his legal issues don’t take him off the ballot, maybe his poll numbers will,” Brzezinski quipped on her daily MSNBC program. “A new survey shows Trump is losing support rapidly, dropping like a rock.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough jumped in before handing it over to Geist, adding that Trump’s “favorability ratings have never been great,” and while it’s been easy to “sit here and talk about all the things that he’s doing and wondering why it doesn’t seem to catch up to him,” this polling may be the other shoe dropping.
“All the numbers that we saw on this ABC News/Ipsos poll showed, really, what Chris Christie said is true: There’s no such thing as a good indictment,” Scarborough said. “People can whistle past the political graveyard and say, ‘Oh, the indictment’s going to help him.’ In the end, you look up and down on this ABC poll, which I suspect will be like all the other polls, it’s all bad news for him. Especially the fact that only one in four Americans now have a favorable impression of him.”
Geist broke the meaning behind the new polling down further, saying that at 25%, “you’re starting to dip into being a fringe political candidate.
“Twenty-five percent is just a terrible number if you’re trying to win a general election,” he continued. “Now, again, his numbers inside the primary are good, we understand that. But if the goal is to win the general election … Looking at the arraignment we saw last week, looking at the result in Wisconsin, looking at this new ruling in Texas on abortion, there are a whole lot of people even in the Republican Party now saying out loud, ‘We’ve gotta figure out another way. Twenty-five percent, this guy can’t win.’”
“We’re not saying that he can’t win or that he won’t win,” Geist clarified, “but the numbers are very bad for Donald Trump. And so you are hearing more and more that this isn’t gonna work, what else do we have?”
Punting the discussion to Jen Psaki, the “Morning Joe” team was at a loss insofar as how Trump may find his way back in the mainstream’s favor.
“Twenty-five percent sometimes you would see maybe for a candidate who’s on the rise, who people still don’t know yet. But everybody knows Donald Trump,” Psaki said. “There aren’t undecided voters who may come his way.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
